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| A story in UTNews covers the recognition of recipients of the winners of the 2013 Shapiro Writing Contest, the recipients of Kalmbach Scholarships, and Prof. Joel Lipman, for his elevation to Professor Emeritus. Read the whole story here. | |
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| An April 26, 2013 article in UTNews recognizes Assoc. Prof. Christina Fitzgerald’s work in co-editing an anthology of Medieval drama. Read the full story at the UTNews website. | |
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| Prof. Douglas W. Coleman conducted a workshop at the Fifth Annual Ohio University CALL Conference on computer-assisted language learning, April 19th 2013, Athens, Ohio. His hands-on workshop was titled “New Victoria: An OpenSim Virtual World for ESL Learning.” Participants visited the 3D virtual world of New Victoria, an imaginary mid-Atlantic island where English is spoken. They were allowed to explore the capital city and were shown how a virtual world can be used in second / foreign language learning.
New Victoria exists (virtually, of course) on a server at the University of Toledo. It is supported by OpenSim, an open-source server for virtual worlds. The UT OpenSim server is administered by Prof. Coleman. More views of New Victoria — and more information about it and its theoretical foundations — can be found here: |
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| English major Lavelle Ridley will be working on a special research project during Summer 2013. His proposal, “The Reconstructive Imagination of the Later Poetry of Herbert Woodward Martin, 1980-2008,” has been chosen for funding by The Office of Undergraduate Research. His faculty sponsor is Dr. Carmen Phelps. Lavelle will take advantage of the extensive collection of Martin’s letters, journals, and other materials, which are held in the Canaday Center on the 5th floor of Carlson Library. Lavelle will study the impact of the Great Depression on Martin’s work, show the influence of the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, and situate the work in the context of other African-American poetry. | |
| Jane Bradley has been named Outstanding Faculty Researcher 2013!
She will be honored at an Awards Ceremony and Banquet on April 22nd. About our outstanding researcher, Matt Wikander writes: “When Jane Bradley came to the University of Toledo in 1990, she had just published her first collection of short stories, Powerlines, named a notable book of the year by the New York Times Book Review. Since then, she has published a novella, Living Doll, another collection of short stories, Are We Lucky Yet?, a textbook for screenwriting, and the novel You Believers. The reception of You Believers has been broadly enthusiastic: “a compelling crime story and a credible picture of the intersection of rural poverty and the New South,” declared Library Journal; “heartbreaking” and “haunting,” was the judgment of Publisher’s Weekly; and Booklist celebrated Bradley’s “unending compassion and chilling assessment of the kind of harm that people are able and willing to inflict on one another.” Translated into both Slovak and French, the novel has gained world-wide attention. Bradley’s honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and an Ohio Council of Arts Individual Fellowship; locally her work with at-risk women in Aurora House was recognized by the Arts Council of Greater Toledo.” |
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| Hunger to Hunger, a book of poetry assembled by David Baker, originally published at UT by Tim Geiger’s Aureole Press, has been digitally republished by the Kenyon Review.
Tim’s edition was “printed on a Vandercook Simple Precision-15 press and features a unique multi-signature, tri-fold design, Mohawk Superfine papers, and Tiziano wrap-around covers.” See details at the Kenyon Review website: |
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Sam Fetters has a consistent academic record of achieving the highest standards, evident in his GPA of 3.95 in his English major. His English Honors thesis on the Cleveland poet d.a. levy was innovative and ambitious and continues to attract attention from Levy’s readers and friends, many of whom have contacted Sam with questions and comments. Sam is also an accomplished poet. While Sam is currently engaged in several different reading and writing projects, he ultimately intends to teach middle or high school. The English Department believes he will be an inspiring mentor to his students.
Prof. Andrew Mattison has recently published a follow-up to his 2007 book (Milton’s Uncertain Eden), The Unimagined in the English Renaissance: Poetry and the limits of mimesis (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press). It was written up in the print version of UT News (March 25, 2013). Read all about it on his Publications Page.
(Click on the image to enlarge it.)
Prof. Douglas W. Coleman conducted a hands-on session titled “OpenSim Basics,” an introduction to the use of OpenSim for language learning, at the 2013 Annual Convention of TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) in Dallas, TX, March 20-23. “OpenSim Basics” was a 70-minute “mini-workshop” offered as an event in the Convention’s Electronic Village (EV). The Computer-Assisted Language Learning Interest Section of TESOL organizes the EV as an annual part of the TESOL Convention. Prof. Coleman’s electronic handout is available here.
Sean Shannon, graduate of the University of Toledo’s English Department (B.A. in Creative Writing, M.A. in English Literature) has reached the quarterfinal round of this year’s Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (General Fiction category) for her unpublished novel The Prostitutes of Lake Wobegon. The list of all quarterfinalists is now available through the contest site at
As part of the contest, the first two chapters of The Prostitutes of Lake Wobegon are now available as a free Kindle e-book download from Amazon at
The novel was also shortlisted for last year’s Dundee International Book Prize.
Semifinalists will be announced by Amazon on April 16th. For more news on The Prostitutes of Lake Wobegon, the novel has a Facebook page and a Google+ page. Shannon, a freelance writer and teacher at Owens Community College, also blogs at http://www.seanshannon.org/.